You might want a helicopter standing by to airlift you to Miami. I'm joking, sort of, if she is complication free, there is a large clinic on St John, part of the Roy Sneider Medical Center on STT. I don't know if they deliver babies on STJ and if it was me, I'd ask before I went down!

To give you an idea of how progressive the practice of obstetrics is here, epidurals only became available on STT a few weeks ago, and that's only if the lone individual authorized to perform them is available. As to karrieb's sugestion, I don't remember where I heard it but someone recently mentioned that an air ambulance won't take a patient in labor to Puerto Rico because of concerns that the delivery would occur in the helicopter. There is a clinic on STJ and a hospital on STT and the Westin will have the names of local doctors. You might want to call the Westin and get the names and numbers of some doctors and then call those doctors to see if they handle obstetrics cases as not all doctors do. You can also check the local phonebook here: viphonebook.com

I am from StX not StT/StJ but you might want to click over to the relocation message board to ask this question. There are many people living on both islands that may know what the best medical help is available at either location. Not sure I would travel that far unless I am having a problem free pregnancy. But best wishes and enjoy your trip if you do.

The Myrah Keating Smith Community Health Center on St. John does not deliver babies. If you want to have your baby here, you have to go with a midwife, or get over to Roy L. Schneider hospital on St. Thomas, which, as dntw8up said, just recently began using epidurals.

Thanks for all the responses. We are not planning on delivering the baby in St. John. She is due at the end of March. Just wanted to get a sense of what type of medical treatment is available in the event she has some type of complication. To date, she has had none.

I just moved back from STT/STJ last month to home (Philadelphia) I was a RN on the Maternal Child Health unit. As far as your concern I would not be worried,as long as are having a normal pregnancy, but I am very impressed that you are researching just in case of complications. I have to top docs that if I were to have a baby I would feel totally confident, Dr Margret Sprauve or Dr Ronald Nimmo. Both will see patients of St. Thomas or St. John and if you happen to use them (I hope you don't need to) please tell them Annelies Pfeiffer says hello.

Good luck!

Annelies

On our trip last March we stayed at the Watergate condos where we met a woman whose company sent her there for several months to help open the new wing at the hospital and she talked about the good medical care available. Hope this helps but I'm sure some of the locals on this board will have more info.

Wow, they just got epidurals?!

when my wife was going thru chemo on the week off we would go down to STJ take the ferry over STT have her blood tested they would fax the results to her Doc in the state's and he would call us with any med changes. Our insurance took care of everything we just had to pay the co-pay

I was present at a friends birth in St Thomas in '99 and she had an epidural. While I know that the medical care is not what you would find at a hospital in major city in the US, there are doctors with some modern medical equipment.

Enjoy your vacation and congratulations.

Some of the best years of my life were in the USCG flying in the back helos out of PR. Made a few runs to the VI for ladies with issues. Always in the middle of the night and come quick. No problem births ever occur in daylight hours.

Push comes to shove and you run into problems - call the CG and get to San Juan. The care in STJ and STT is good, but you may find limited. Not knocking the health care, just suggesting you may find better 60 miles NW in SJ.

Enjoy your vacation and concur with all - a little bit of planning goes a long way